Hasidic Man Found Guilty of Gang Assault in Beating of Black Student in Brooklyn

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Mayer Herskovic, shown leaving court last week, was found guilty Friday of gang assault and other charges in an attack on a black student, Taj Patterson, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in 2013.CreditBryan Thomas for The New York Times

A Brooklyn man was convicted on Friday of participating in a racially charged beating of a black college student in fall 2013 that left the victim without vision in his right eye.

Justice Danny K. Chun of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn issued the guilty verdict after a bench trial that included video surveillance footage, DNA evidence and testimony from the victim, Taj Patterson, who described being set upon by up to 20 men as he walked through the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn early one morning.

Appearing before a hushed gallery that was filled to capacity, Justice Chun announced that he found the defendant, Mayer Herskovic, 24, guilty of unlawful imprisonment, menacing and gang assault. The last charge carries a penalty of three and a half to 15 years.

The brutal beating of Mr. Patterson in a primarily Hasidic neighborhood drew comparisons to previous attacks on black men in white ethnic enclaves, like one that occurred three decades ago in Howard Beach, Queens. The assault in Williamsburg also raised questions about the private security forces known as shomrim, a Hebrew term meaning guards, which patrol ultra-Orthodox parts of Brooklyn. While some have said the groups provide a sense of safety, others have said they sometimes act like vigilantes.

Members of one such group, known as the Williamsburg Safety Patrol, encountered Mr. Patterson early on the morning of Dec. 1, 2013. Mr. Patterson, a fashion student, said he was passing through Williamsburg after a birthday party where he said he had drunk two margaritas and a shot of brandy and was planning to walk home to the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. The patrol members said they were responding to reports — later deemed unfounded — that someone had vandalized cars. Believing that Mr. Patterson was the culprit, they chased him, held him down and beat him, breaking an eye socket and causing him to lose sight in his right eye.

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Taj Patterson, center, testified in August that he had been beaten by a group of Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg.CreditVictor J. Blue for The New York Times

The attackers scattered when a passing bus driver and others intervened. Responding police officers spoke with four witnesses and had the license plate number of a car that one attacker used to flee, but the case was closed without any arrests. After Mr. Patterson’s mother went to the media with her son’s account, the police reopened the investigation.

Initially, five men — Pinchas Braver, Joseph Fried, Mr. Herskovic, Aharon Hollender and Abraham Winkler — were charged in connection with the assault. Prosecutors dismissed charges against Mr. Fried and Mr. Hollender, saying the witnesses who had identified them had recanted their statements. Mr. Winkler and Mr. Braver pleaded guilty in May to the lesser crime of unlawful imprisonment. They were sentenced to probation and community service.

Mr. Patterson testified that he remembered being chased by a crowd and then punched and kicked by men, including one who drove a thumb into his right eye. Mr. Herskovic did not take the stand.

The defense questioned a crucial piece of evidence, a black Air Jordan sneaker belonging to Mr. Patterson that was found on a nearby roof after the assault, which prosecutors said bore Mr. Herskovic’s DNA. An expert witness testifying for the defense suggested that the testing method used on the sneaker had been imprecise. Prosecutors countered with another expert who testified that the method was reliable.

During closing arguments, Mr. Herskovic’s lawyer, Israel Fried, said Mr. Patterson had minimized the amount of alcohol he had drunk before the beating and accused other witnesses of embellishing their accounts. He added that his client was being blamed for the actions of other Hasidic men because “they all appear and look the same,” suggesting at one point that the DNA identified as belonging to Mr. Herskovic could have come from another Hasidic man, because people who are part of the “same substructure of the culture” could have similar DNA profiles.

“He’s not in the video,” Mr. Fried said of his client. “Not one witness sees him there.”

A prosecutor, Timothy Gough, said in his summation that Mr. Patterson and another witness had testified that one attacker had dragged him by a foot, pulled off a sneaker and hurled it onto a roof. That Mr. Herskovic’s DNA had ended up on Mr. Patterson’s Air Jordan could be interpreted only one way, he said, adding, “This defendant was not only involved in the attack but he was the one who pulled it off and threw it.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Hasidic Man Found Guilty of Gang Assault in Beating of Black Student in Brooklyn. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe